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Okay, I’ve just experienced my first East Coast show and I gotta say I had a blast! I’m used to the out of town setting in the desert with a small city 5-10 minutes away. But to my surprise PF show scene was located directly in the city! Made some different scenery than my usual show experience. Although this show is actually made up of two different shows that go on at the same time, we decided to cover the whole weekend as one big event and call it Pigeon Forge. For all that disagree, we are sorry. Alright, lets talk about the trip to PF cause I want everyone to know why I’m going to kick my fellow SSM copy editor square in the nuts! After an hour lay over in Minneapolis and a 2 hour flight to Nashville, I had plenty of time to take down a few brews. Now knowing Bobby and his smart-ass personality, I was waiting for something crazy when I get off the plane. As I walk off the plane, I see this short almost bald dude holding a sign which says “National Transvestite Coalition President.” I knew it was Bobby right away with the smirk trying not to look me straight in the eyes. What a bastard! And to make things worse, one guy walked by me and asked if I was going to be re-elected! I’m telling everyone now I am not, I repeat, I am not a transvestite! LOL I’ll get even Bobby…haha…wait till SEMA! So now that I’ve arrived in Nashville, we have a day before we leave for PF. Much to my surprise, there are not as many cowboys as I expected. I didn’t hear much country music which was nice as well. After enjoying a night in the fine city of Nashville, it was time to head out on the drive to Pigeon Forge. I was expecting some little rink-a-dink town with like 800 people as the population. But, what I found was a town crammed packed with minis, compacts, wagons, fullsizes and much more! Hotels everywhere and all booked up full of our fellow enthusiasts! As we roll into the Howard Johnson we happen to see our fellow ///RA members all out chillin’, drinking beer and cleaning there rides. How excited I was. It was like I was 8 all over again and I just went into Toys-R-Us for the first time! Before play, we had to check in. But after that, it was time to get our drink on! As the night was ending, I found myself with a group of guys that I had just met face to face after talking to them over the internet for so long. It was the boys from Exclusive Styles. Seeing that we were outta beer we ventured on up to their room where they had a ‘fridge full of more brew! After long discussions about Gump being camera shy, the sun was starting to rise and it was time for me to get at least one hour of sleep before the show.
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Ahhhh…ShowTime! Damn, it was about 8:30 and I slept about an hour too long. Now it was time to wake the dead, Bobby, and venture on to Burger King for some breakfast. After a healthy breakfast we went over to Sandy’s show to start the day. Once we arrived, we noticed right away that it was becoming packed. Although kinda spread out, there were plenty of phat rides to look at and tons of shade to hide from the Tennessee heat. There were vender booths such as Godfathers Custom and BFG, which were attracting crowds along with a stereo competition. Well, now that we were there it was time for Bobby and I to start snapping photos. (Note to self…wear something with lots of pockets so you don’t have to carry camera bag.) After walking around for what seemed like hours, we then discovered that we had been there longer than planned and it was time to head to Charles’ show so we would still have time to shoot some features. Getting to Charles' show was a little bit trickier than expected. The traffic was bumper to bumper in all 3 lanes all the way to the show exit. Once there, it was time for us to start shooting some more show shots! There, we discovered more venders and yet another show packed full of phat rides. And with the drive-thru judging, it seemed like more and more rides where showing up. We made sure we had about three passes through the show site to make sure we didn’t miss anything worth taking a picture of. After scrounging up our feature vehicles to shoot, it was time to head back to the Howard Johnson where we were meeting them. After gathering the flock of feature vehicles and snapping all the photos we need to show our readers just how nice these rides are, we headed back to the hotel to get ourselves fed and cleaned up for the nights events. Well, the day was coming to an end, we just shot some phat rides, and now it’ s time to get a bite to eat and start drinking for another night of kickin’ it with the boys. After eating some pizza and downing a couple of beers, everyone started arriving back from the show. Now the party was about to begin! There were people everywhere, including Pigeon Forge’s finest. The cops were really cracking down hard and people were getting arrested for stupid things, but it didn’t stop the fun. The cops needed to chill out a little, but as is life, gotta go with the flow. The crews in front of the Howard Johnson decided to use there super soakers to wet the streets and get a burn out contest going - it was crazy! Continued------->
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